While state lawmakers caucused above them on the pension issue, members of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee marked the beginning of the sixth year of the display of a crèche in the buzzing Statehouse rotunda.

The privately funded and maintained display depicting a newborn Jesus in a manger with Joseph and Mary on either side is joined by the state’s Christmas tree, a menorah to mark the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and a sign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation noting the winter solstice.

Julie Zanoza of Lincoln, chairman of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee that was founded by her late husband, said the Nativity display “wouldn’t be here without the Thomas More Society,” which paid for the statues and has fought for the rights of religious organizations to have displays in public places.

Tom Brejcha, president and chief legal counsel of the Chicago-based society, noted Tuesday that the Nativity display is “a private function, not a government function,” which gives it protection under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

He said a Nativity display in Chicago’s City Hall was successfully challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union in the late 1970s because the display, although sponsored by the plasterers’ union, was cared for by city workers, who stored it away after the holidays.

But under the Statehouse dome, “government’s sole role is as a gatekeeper of this public space.”

The SNSC’s goal is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the group said in a press release. But its secondary goal is to publicize the constitutionality of “private expressions of religious faith in the public square.”

“We’re here on our soapbox to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ,” Brejcha said.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese, described by Zanoza as “a pro-family warrior,” said it was fitting that the crèche is displayed in the Capitol, “a secular place.”

“Christ wasn’t born in a church,” Paprocki said. “He was born in a secular place among the people.”

Paprocki, a strident critic of the same-sex marriage law that Illinois enacted last month, again said gay marriage is a sin.

He said those who have sought “a redefinition of marriage claim to do so out of love.”

But he said they must have a true definition of love, and that the truth is not a thing but a person — Jesus Christ.

Tuesday’s ceremony also included carols and the laying of a Christmas wreath in honor of the service and sacrifice of America’s military veterans.

Illinois, Mississippi and Rhode Island previously were the only states that displayed Nativity scenes in their Capitol buildings, although Florida unveiled its crèche this week, Brejcha said.